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THE 



QUEEN Of ISLANDS, 



AND THE 



KING OF RIVERS. 



WITH A CHART OF OUR SLAVE AND FREE SOIL TERRITORY- 



]BY (BMA H[©ll»©limY. 



[These Chapters of a forthcomins; work, entitled " Our Mother Land," are published 
in advance, with the consent of the Author, by the friends of Cuba and the Union.] 



NEW-YORK: 
CHARLES WOOD, 82 NASSAU STREET. 

WM. ADAM, Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington, D. C. 



1850. 

> . . 



THE 



QUEEN OP ISLANDS, 



AND THE 



KING OP RIVERS. 



/ ■^r A . '^ '^^ 



[These Chapters of a forthcoming work, entitled " Our Mother Land," are published 
in advance, with the consent of the Author, by the friends of Cuba and the Union.l 



f 



CHARLES WOOD, 82 NASSAU STREET. 

WM. ADAM, Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington, D. C. 



1850. 






^-> 



THE 



CUBA AND HER DESTINY. 

An oppressed nation stands in the gates of our confede- 
ration and pleads with God and man for liberty. Borne 
down hy foreign soldiers, for whose support she is taxed, 
until almost the necessaries of life are doubled in price ; 
deprived of freedom of speech, of press, and of conscience ; 
forbid to discuss or even petition for relief, and overwhelm- 
ed by importations of slaves from Africa, whose presence 
she does not desire, but who are held upon her disarmed 
citizens in perpetual threat, Cuba has reached that point of 
suffering in which it becomes suicide and crime to remain 
passive. Cuba belongs to the Cubans, and they have a 
right higher than human conventions — a right directly from 
the throne of Divine Justice — to govern themselves on the 
soil they give to civilization by their intelligence, and to 
utility by their toil. Not to admit this axiom is heresy to 
cur republican creed,- and we are false to the faith of our 
revolutionary sires if we deny to others the truths which 
they bled to leave us in sure heritage. If Washington 
acted right and Jefferson reasoned well, Cuba cannot be 
wrong in following their example. 

Most of the Creoles of the Island are republicans at heart, 
and the press and institutions of the Union are the object 



and theme of many secret meetings and midnight prayers. 
Exile, imprisonment, ruin and death, await the hardy apos- 
tles of freedom ; but still they offer themselves freely to 
the work, and their number, courage, influence and com- 
bination dfsturbs the rest of the governors of Cuba, who in 
vain seek to stifle them with new oppressions. On one oc- 
casion a party of these determined revolutionists conveyed 
to the woods a small printing press, such a one as Franklin 
used and " Common Sense" was printed on, and there in 
silence of night they worked off their revolutionary appeals. 
This and every other effort was pressed too close by the 
military and police, and some friends of Cuba, connected 
with the New- York press, encouraged the idea of establish- 
ing an Anglo-Spanish paper at a convenient point beyond 
the reach of the Governor- General, from whence the truth 
and light could be cast into Cuba, and her popular thought 
moulded into some form of general organization. La Verdad 
(The Truth) was thus called into existence, and its plan 
may be useful to other revolutionists who cannot print the 
truth at home. The paper is — and has been two years — 
issued at New- York, and circulated gratuitously in the 
Island of Cuba and Porto Rico, and all along the margin of 
the Mexican Gulf, from whence the aroma of its sentiments 
penetrates to its destined mark. The talent and money of 
the Cubans support it so ably and liberally that the leading 
personages of the Spanish government are bounteously sup- 
plied with valuable information concerning their own cou- 
duct and affairs through this medium, and not l^ss have the 
American journals found in its columns their most copious 
and reliable accounts of the situation of Cuba. The Island 
press is not allowed to speak of public affairs except in 
such terms as the royal censors direct ; and the world at 
large mainly learns through it and by fragments from pri- 
vate letters — also written under dread of a strict post-ofEce 



inquisition — what Cuba thinks and suffers. Under the 
counsels of '' Verdad" committee of exiles, and in union 
with her phalanx of resolute sons at home, Cuba is organi- 
zing for revolt ; and perhaps even as I write the sword is 
flashing from the scabbard : but whether the effort of to-day- 
is successful, or temporarily quenched in blood, the seed is 
sown and the harvest near. Spain may not be richer for 
the fruits of Cuban industry in 1850 ; and what American 
would put forth his hand to aid in riveting the fetters of a 
people who bravely strike at kingly oppressions, and risk 
all for the enfranchisement of their country and children ? 

" Cuba has the power, as well as the will and wisdom, to 
be free. She cannot be kept forever in bonds, endowed as 
she is with a population of 1,200,000 ; with a revenue of 
twenty millions ; with the intercourse and light attending 
sixty millions of outward and inward trade ; with a territo- 
ry equal to some of our noblest States ; with a soil teeming 
with the choicest productions ; with her forests of the most 
precious woods ; with her magnificent and commanding 
harbors ; with her unmatched position as the warder of the 
Mexican Gulf, and the guardian of the communication with 
the Pacific. Cuba the peerless— Cuba the desired — Cuba 
the Queen of the American Islands — will not consent to re- 
main always a manacled slave at our threshold ; and when 
her chains do break, the echo will vibrate, whether we 
choose or not, strongly on our interests. The United States 
can no more say, " Cuba is nought to us," than Cuba can 
detach herself from her anchorage in the portals of our 
American sea, or her sentinelship over against the entrance 
of the thousand armed Mississippi. "* 

When the inevitable day arrives in which the key of the 
Gulf falls from the hand of its European master, it must 
take one of these three pobiiions ; and either of them will 
involve grave considerations for this republic : — 



1. Cuba, by itself or with Porto Pvico, may sustain an in- 
dependent attitude. 

2. United to St. Domingo and other islands under the 
protection of England, she may heud a " Republic of An- 
tilla," subject to a preponderant negro population, and obe- 
dienl to the British policy of creating a colored empire in 
the lap of the twin continent of America. 

3. Cuba annexed to this Confederation may make another 
pillar in our temple of Union, and another balance-wheel 
to the Confederation. 

The fate of Cuba, with her million souls and boundless 
hereafter, may be submitted to the verdict of our people be- 
fore 1850 has run its last sands, and a just, wise and mag- 
nanimous nation would not willingly meet unprepared this 
momentous question. 

Calmly, soberly, and dispassionately, like true and loving 
children of the Union, reverencing and guarding in filial 
love our mighty nursing mother ; like republicans and like 
Christians, ready to admit and perform our whole duty to 
man, let us candidly examine our future relations with 
Cuba. 

It is more than idle to build upon the conservation of the 
statu quo, for even those who affect to preach it must see 
that it cannot be maintained amid the reeling powers and 
crushing thrones of Europe with which it is entangled, and 
whenever or however the change comes, it must result in 
Cuba annexed, or Cuba independent. '^ 

The comparative value to the Union, of Cuba as a part of 
ourselves, or Cuba subject to foreign, if not hostile influen- 
ces, has a threefold bearing on our interests. It aftects us 
as citizens of individual States— as a nation in the face of 
other nations— and as a race in relation with the other races 
of the earth. In weighing, as we ought, each separate 
consideration by us own merits, it is .desirable to avoid per- 



plexing theories, and bring each phase in succession to the 
test of solid facts and indisputable arithmetic. 



WILL THE ANNEXATION OF CUBA BENEFIT THE 
DOMESTIC INTERESTS OF THE UNION ? 

Cuba seems placed, by the finger of a kindly Providence, 
between the Atlantic and the Mexican seas, at the crossing 
point of all the great lines of our immense coasting trade, 
to serve as the centre of exchange for a domestic commerce 
as extensive as our territory, and as free as our institutions. 
It is only after a careful study of the incredible extent and 
variety of the products of our thirty States, with all their 
grades of climate, and in the whole circumference of their 
natural and manufactured wealth, and then only with the 
map of North America distinctly before the eye, that the 
importance of Cuba, as a point of reception and distribution, 
can be fairly understood. If her matchless harbors were 
not locked up by foreign jealousies, and our ships could but 
find themselves always at home for shelter, water, and re- 
freshment, at this commodious halting place, it would be 
worth a round purchase sum to our traders, independent of 
the safe keeping of the Gulf, and the command of her pre- 
cious staples. 

From her central throne she sees our long line of coast 
break away in numerous links of diverse interests and pro- 
ductions, which must yet intercommunicate past her doors 
to come to market and value. To the northward she glan- 
ces along the two thousand miles of seaboard and deep 
harbors of the " Old Thirteen," all turned toward her to re- 
ceive her sugar and coffee, and supply her with bread and 
clothing, even though under the limits and disadvantages of 
the restrictions of her Spanish masters. 



Towards the West, beginning with Florida, which is al- 
most within touch, lies another two thousand miles of bay 
and inlet, bordering the States on the Mississippi and Gulf 
of Mexico, those magnificent later acquisitions which have 
doubled the wealth, power, and domain of the Union, and 
whose cotton bales have been more efficacious teachers to 
manufacturing Europe than cannon balls. Opposite, she 
looks up the arteries of the mighty king of rivers, who em- 
braces in his far-reaching arms an imperial family of 
sovereignties, before he comes with the tributes of many 
climates to seek a reservoir for his ten thousand miles of 
steam navigation. 

No one State of the Union is so accessible to all the 
others as Cuba, Neither does any State command, like 
her, every direct avenue to our territories on the Pacific. 
She stands almost midway in the line of transit between the 
Eastern cities and California, whether we go by the Isth- 
mus of Panama, by Lake Nicaragua, by the near but 
strangely neglected Isthmus of Cortez, or by the shortest 
overland route on our own soil, via Texas and the Paso del 
Norte. It is the invaluable resting-place and point of in- 
terchange for all our steamers to the Gulf coast, to the 
West India Islands, to the various Isthmus routes, and to 
South America. Under all the vexations and expenses of 
a foreign and unfriendly system, our merchants can so bad- 
ly dispense with Cuba for a place of rest, refreshment and 
exchange, that they submit in silence to many illegal ex- 
actions, and conceal from the American public many indig- 
nities to our flag — as in the cases of the Hecla and Childe 
Harold — rather than forego access to the port of Havana. 
If Cuba was fully and freely our own, we would as soon 
think of casting New- York out of our calculations of com- 
mercial wealth, as this splendid and necessary mart for all 
our coasts. As an outpost, vital to American trade and 



defence, and as a centre of transit and -exchange, Cuba 
must grow in importance to the whole family of the Con- 
federation, in even measure with the growth of the States 
on the Pacific, and the rising tide of Oriental business 
which our free and fortunate stars are about to lead from 
Asia across the Isthmus. She lies exactly in the track of 
the golden current, and none of the States are, like her, in 
a position to watch and defend every inlet and outlet. 

In the circle of production, essential to a home supply, 
always sure, and independent of foreign interference, Cuba 
can fill nobly the remaining gap, with her coffee, cocoa and 
tropical fruits. In this, too, she would serve all her sisters 
of the Union, for she would sell to every one and buy of 
every one, which is not true of the special product of any 
other State. She would also add as much as the Union re- 
ally needs of sugar lands, and would maket hat henceforth 
a stroncr and distinct feature in the national balance of in- 
terests. A new sectional interest always implies another 
mediator in the councils of the Confederation — a proved 
truth in favor of the permanent equilibrium of the Republic 
which the opponents of annexation refuse to take fairly into 
account. The manufacturing East, the wheat and cattle- 
raising West, the commercial Middle States, the cotton- 
growing South- West, the rice and sugar planting South, 
and, last and latest, the new-born and gigantic mineral 
power starting up on the great northern lakes and seaming 
the continent, down to the far Pacific, with a broad zone, 
have, each and every one, their independent sectional weight 
and representation, as well as a diffused reciprocal depen- 
dence on each other, and on the Uunion as a whole. In the 
perpetually recurring— but under these balance checks ne- 
ver fatal — State opposition, every distinct interest is a distinct 
guarantee for the general equity of adjustment. We have 
seen in the slavery discussions how far sectional bitterness 
1* 



10 

can go, when the whole Union is reduced to two parties, 
with no disinterested and intermediate powers between them, 
to urge peace and teach conciliation. Yet even in this 
stress we shall find at last, that the counsels which open 
the way, and the votes that ,compel moderation and com- 
promise, will come from almost a third interest. — The Mid- 
dle States, those that lay along the line of division, and those 
that are themselves in transition from slave-holding to eman- 
cipation, will come to the rescue and forbid extreme mea- 
sures. Cuba may suffer from the dispute between the free 
and slave cultivated States ; but apart from this, she would 
come into the Union without offence to any, and to the ab- 
solute profit of every partner in the Confederation. In 
bringing to the commonwealth a class of luxuries which 
every State largely demands and consumes, and which are 
not produced in our present limits, she also brings to the 
Union fresh elements of mediation, harmony, and stable 
equipoise. 

The money value of this circulation of natural products 
would be more conspicuously evident if Cuba could trade 
with us on family terms, unembarrassed by ihe heavy and 
wasteful hindrance of the Spanish tariffs. Official documents 
show that out of the 20 or 22 millions of dollars of annual 
exportations into Cuba, fifteen millions are in provisions, 
fabrics, lumber, and meterials which one or the other of the 
United States could better supply than any other country ; 
but through the multitude of taxes and, restrictions imposed 
by European policy, not more than a third of it comes from 
our fields find factories. Our industrial classes lose by this 
system the stimulus of ten millions a year — sufficient to em- 
ploy and support forty thousand laborers — while the Cubans 
only obtain, under these exorbitant imposts, about one half 
as much for their money as they would get of us in a free, 
fair market. 



11 

Lines of steamers and sailing vessels would doubtless be 
established from all our leading sea-ports, from Flavana to 
Matanzas, the year they could be assured of freedom, secu- 
rity, and permanency, under our flag, since, under many 
vexations and uncertainties, we now employ in the Cuban 
trade a large tonnage. The custom-houses of Cuba report 
the clearance of not far from one thousand American ves- 
sels in a year — from the summer of 1848 to the summer of 
1849 — and the table of imports and exports proves that this 
handsome mercantile fleet would be doubled, if purchase 
and supply were relieved from the multifarious trammels 
of the Spanish tariff. The Cubans import $20,000,000 a 
year of such commodities as the United States produce, and 
could' readily supply her on better terms than the Islands 
can buy of distant Europe, if we were permitted to compete 
in open market ; and then these commodities would be con- 
veyed to her in our own ships. 

Of the ^60,000,000 of annual imports and exports of this 
fertile and extensive Island, three-fourths ought, and would 
be managed by our merchant marine, if it were embraced 
by our government. 

By reason of this system of preventions our shipping in- 
terest can only employ 476,000 tons in a year in this trade, 
for which it pays $1..50 a ton duty to Spain, while it would 
find advantageous service at once for a million of tons if the 
ports of the island were free to our country. This brief 
outline of the domestic and pecuniary inducements to an- 
nexation are based on official data, and it is kept within the 
mark for the convenience of using round numbers ; but from 
it we can deduce whether the States would gain or lose by 
the accession of Cuba. 

In 1846, a fraction more than one fourth of the entire 
imports of Cuba were from the United States, and if the 
same ratio holds good, as is probable, we send to Cuba the 



12 

current year about $8,000,000 in American productions. 
Meanwhile something more than $10,000,000 of similar ar- 
tides of commerce are brought in from Europe, to the hea- 
vy disadvantage of the Cubans, by a stringent system of 
protection for Spanish products. To specify : — Flour from 
Spain pays a duty of only $2. 50 the barrel, but from this 
country, and in American ships, it pays $10.50. Thus, to 
compel the Cubans to eat the inferior Spanish flour, injured 
by a sea voyage of 4,000 miles, this enormous tax is laid 
on an essential article of daily use, though, for the sake of 
revenue, $2.50 is also laid on the article from the mother 
country. These duties, freight, and other expenses, raise 
the cost to the consumer to $18 or $20 a barrel, and limit, 
of necessity, the luxury of good bread to the wealthier class- 
es. Set aside these impediments, and instead of the 300,- 
000 barrels now entered, and chiefly from Spain, a million 
barrels would be annually demanded by the 1,200,000 in- 
habitants of Cuba. The climate and soil of Cuba is not 
adapted to the profitable cultivation of the kin Js of provi- 
sions which the habits of the day call for ; but she produces 
exactly what will most acceptably pay for them where they 
are best, nearest, and most abundant — in the United States. 
If Cuba wants flour, fish, cured meats, and other provisions, 
to the amount of $10,000,000, which she could, in unshackled 
trade, buy of us better than anywhere else ; if she requires 
in articles for house and field, in fabrics of raiment, neces- 
sity or luxury, to the amount of $10,000,000 more, so, too, 
do the United States import 150,000;000 lbs. of coffee, at 
$3,000,000, and sugar to-<he amount of $9,000,000, which, 
under the impetus of freedom, and the encouragement of a 
profitable reciprocity, Cuba could very well supply. It 
must be borne in mind, that a vast amount of rich cofiee and 
sugar land lies waste and untouched on that Island, which 
would bloom into a garden, under the genial breath of liber- 



13 

al institutions, as her own staticians estimate but one-ninth 
of the soil enclosed. 

The Upper Mississippi and the Ohio States are the chief 
losers by the flour exclusion ; for Cuba, fronting, as she does, 
the outlet of the mighty valley, is very accessible to that 
trade ; but all the grain States share in the loss, for they all 
buy sugar and coffee, and could all undersell Europe in the 
ports of Cuba. The mineral region is also a larger loser than 
at the first glance would be thought possible. The staples 
of Cuba are raised at a considerable expenditure of imple- 
ments and machinery, in which iron and copper hold a con- 
spicuous share. That class of imports, nearly all of which 
are manufactured in this country, but are discouraged from 
seeking a market in Cuba by an average impost of 35 per 
cent, are brought in to the amount of $2,000,000 annually, 
and with a steady increase of demand. This should, of 
right, almost entirely be paid to the forges and workshops 
of Pennsylvania, and the States west of her, who construct 
the articles in question, such as ploughs, hoes, spades, boil- 
ers, and all the et-ceteras of Southern husbandry, and sell 
them in all the markets in our Gulf and Atlantic States, from 
80 to 200 per cent, less than the over-tariffed Cuban pays 
for the like. Consider the effect of these exorbitant 
charges on provisions and implements on the net receipts of 
production. 

New England is not less concerned in unbinding this 
trade, for besides the nine millions which should be paid to 
our farmers, and the two millions in metals, implements 
and machinery, which of right should float to her from down 
the Ohio and Mississippi, Cuba annually requires cotton 
and woolen fabrics and ready-made furniture and apparel 
to the invoice value of three millions more, all of which 
the Yankee looms and mechanics should create. Fifteen 
millions are therefore imported into Cuba which our citizens 



14 

in the mining, manufacturing, and agricultural States should 
supply, and which the ships of the commercial sections 
should convey, and this mass of needful food, raiment, fur- 
niture, and implements for house and land, when broken up 
in detail and overwhelmed at each step with fresh imposi- 
tions, do not cost the Cubans less than thirty millions of 
dollars. 

Nothing escapes those excessive contributions, and they 
are always to the disadvantage of American industry. — 
Carts, carriages, and furniture, pay about 100 per cent. ; 
yet, on account of bulk and distance, Spain leaves to us the 
principal supply, even under this liberal protection. The 
Eastern and Middle States send about $1,000,000 a year, 
at a rough estimate, for there is no reliable date at hand, of 
those conveniences ; but still the Island is scantily supplied. 
Cotton and woolen goods range from 27 to 33i per cent, 
duty by the letter of the tariff; but under their system of 
re-appraisal they pay more, and the official returns show 
upwards of $3,000,000 in description of goods manufactured 
in the New England States, and sold in our retail markets, 
all over the Union, at from 30 to 100 per cent, less than 
in Cuba, whose producers in this way lose one-third or one- 
half the bsnefits of their income. A careful revision of the 
charges on imports corresponding to our list of American 
fabrics and productions, with the invoice prices, and the 
usual rates paid by the consumer, will convince the sim- 
plest understanding that is willing to be candid, that $20,000,- 
000 of the $30,000,000 (keeping to round and approximate 
numbers) of annual imports into Cuba, ought, if the interests 
and convenience of the direct producers and purchasers 
were consulted, to come to the industrial classes of the Uni- 
on. Not only would the fostering dew of $20,000,000 sup- 
port in comfort many thousand families now landing on our 
shores, in search of homes and employment, but it would 



15 

bring to the tables of all our people the delicate fruits of the 
torrid zone, in which Cuba abounds, at prices far below 
anything we have ever known. The rapid steam inter- 
communication between sister States, and the splendid geo- 
graphical position of the " Key of the Gulf," would bring 
Havana as near St. Louis and New York, as they are to 
each other, or to New Orleans, and in more prompt inter- 
change with all the cities of the Gulf and Atlantic coasts, 
than those coasts can be with each other. 

As an open, safe, and reliable haven of rest, aid, and sup- 
ply, beyond any fear of foreign hostility or interference, 
standing midway as she does on the path from the Atlantic 
to the Gulf, from the Atlantic to the Pacific, by the way 
of either Isthmus, and most •particularly by the Isthmus of 
Cortes, the shortest though most overlooked of all of them, 
and commanding the ingress and egress to the Gulf, and all 
the coast of Mexico, the control of this Island is of immense, 
of incomputable importance to the dignity and independence 
of our coast commerce. It even stands interferingly in the 
way between the Atlantic ports and the Gulf terminus of 
the short land route to California, on our own soil, now in 
course of survey by United States' Engineers, and which 
a pioneer merchant train of 80 wagons is now traversing 
under General W. L. Cazneau, with a view to penetrate to 
the markets of Northern Mexico by the new and direct line 
from the Gulf It is the priceless jewel that clasps into one 
magnificent unbroken chain, the vast circle of our Pacific, 
Gulf, and Atlantic trade. We only require this one link to 
belt 5,(100 miles of sea-board in close and continuous mart 
and commercial unity, presenting, on every side, a well 
connected defence against the pretensions of rival or enemy. 
Whenever the trembling, restless Seal of the Gulf drops from 
the nerveless finger of Spain, there will, be some envy in 
Europe, but little open resistance made to its passing into 



16 

the grasp of our Eagle. When this republic assumes the 
charge, Europe will retire from this continent, and thence- 
forth on all our coasts we will ask nothing but our steam 
marine, and the splendor of our flag, to command the re- 
spect of the world for our commerce. 



WILL THE ANNEXATION OF CUBA ADD TO OUR 
STRENGTH AS A NATION ? 

The reply is written on the map of North America, and 
in the last ten years of her history. The elements of our 
outward strength and defence — like the points and possibili- 
ties of foreign annoyance — are visible to any capacity that 
has received the free, broad training of American thought. 

With our vast and varied territory and our self-dependent 
habits, more than to any other nation, it is desirable to us 
to maintain the freedom of our coast trade beyond every 
fear of insult or embarrassment. 

It is desirable that a foreign nation should no longer 
boast that it can at any time " cut in two the trade between 
the Gulf and the Atlantic States, and break up at pleasure 
the sea communication between New-Orleans and New- 
York." 

It is desirable that we should ourselves command the out- 
lets and inlets of our own inland seas, and hold open in our 
own hands the best avenues to our territories and trade on 
the Pacific. 

It is desirable, for the integrity of the Confederation, to 
protect thoroughly the sea door to the shortest overland route 
to California on our own soil, which is accessible to the 
greatest number of States, and also opens to them the not 
less important though unexplored mineral regions of Cen- 
tralia. 



17 

It is desirable that a negro empire should not be consoli- 
dated by a hostile power within a few days sail, by steam, 
of fifteen hundred or two thousand miles range of our sea- 
bo-erd, and held in leash to east its ferocious hordes upon 
that long defenceless line of towns and settlements to burn 
and slaughter until exterminated. 

It is desik-able also to be more independent of standing 
armies, with their train of military burthens and privileges 
above the law, and it is not less desirable to escape the char- 
ges and bad example of a costly and unrepublican navy, 
and create in its stead a powerful and self-supporting steam 
marine. 

If on the accession of Cuba turns the gain or loss of all 
this, it will not be denied that its purchase would be an 
economy, and its admission a rich gain to our republican 
strength and majesty. 

Without recurring to the importance of Cuba as a Mart 
of Exchange, at the most accessible crossing- point, to all 
the thirty partners in our confederation of trade and produc- 
tion ; or to her value as a buyer and seller in all our mar- 
kets, and the cheap supplier of the tropical productions not 
yet included in our home list ; or to her weight as the 
employer of our ships and mariners the amount of twenty, 
or, under the impetus of freedom, thirty millions a year, 
she would be a tower of strength and a rock of defence to 
all our coasts. Her whole seven hundred miles of length 
is one mighty fortress : each one of her hundred hill-crown- 
ed bays is a haven of shelter to our adventurous ships, and 
an outpost to sentinel every movement of offence and bar 
out every act of hostile import. Standing like a proud and 
faithful warder in the entrance of the Gulf of Mexico, yet 
stretching far to the east, so as to overlook and intercept 
any unfriendly demonstration upon either of the great 
thoroughfares to South America or the Pacific, she is in a 



18 

position to overawe the islands around her, and watch and 
defend the outside approaches to all the Isthmus routes to 
the Pacific, while she guards the portals of our vast inland 
sea, the reservoir of the Mississippi and Mexican trade, the 
rendezvous of California transit, and, what has not yet been 
duly heeded, the outlet of an immense, though new-born, 
mineral wealth, which is yet to control the naetal markets 
of Christendom. 

Half a dozen steamers would bridge with their cannon 
the narrow straits between Yucatan and the west point of 
Cuba on the west, and between Florida and Matanzas on 
the north, and seal hermetically to every aggressive stran- 
ger the entire coast circle of the American Mediterranean. 
This simple geographical fact constitutes Cuba the key of 
the Gulf, and it would be felt if it passed into the grasp of 
a strong and jealous rival. England, firmly resting on 
Cuba, and with Jamaica and Bahamas to flank her steam 
operations, would have full retreat and succor for her fleets, 
and would be able at need to concentrate the force of an 
empire against our coasting trade. With such a firm and 
convenient cover as that island, with its self-defended coast 
and secure harbors, she could face, Janus-like, in every di- 
rection. With Canada and the Bermudas — raised for that 
purpose into a strong naval station — opposite our centre on 
the Atlantic, and half-way between those strong extremes, 
she would present a dangerous front to our northern coasts, 
while she executed the bold threat of her Minister, to " shut 
up the Gulf of Mexico, cut in twain the commerce between 
it and the Atlantic States, and close the mouth of the Mis- 
sissippi and its hundred tributaries to the trade and assis- 
tance of the shipping and manufacturing States." But 
strike Cuba — its central and noblest jewel — from this dia- 
dem of power, and her broken circlet of American strong- 
holds is no longer worth the wearing. 



19 

England — controlling Cuba on the north, as she claims 
the Mosquito shore on the south, and mistress of Balize on 
the west, as she is of Jamaica on the east — would be the 
arbitress of the Caribbean sea — even now almost her own, 
and well guarded by her long array of Leeward and Wind- 
ward Islands from other intrusion. 

The same steam fleets that watch, and the same Island 
Key that locks and unlocks the Gulf of Mexico, with our 
long chain of Rivers and States dependent on it, also watch- 
es the inlets of the Caribbean and locks and unlocks the 
gates of the Pacific. Cuba, the Queen of the Antilles, un- 
rolls her long barrier exactly in the path to the Pacific, 
whether by the Gulf or Isthmus ; and whoever holds her, 
commands the great highway to Mexico and South Ameri- 
ca, to Oregon and California, and the Pacific. If it were 
ours, we would soon cut asunder the narrow bar of land 
that parts the oceans, and turn the revolutionized trade of 
the world into our own inland sea, where we should know 
well how to defend its treasures. 

The command of the shortest route by sea and by land 
to our distant territories, is a national necessity only to be 
computed by our estimation of the value of the safety, har- 
mony and progress to the Union. The omission to secure 
the right of way across the Isthmus of Cortes to Tehuante- 
pec, and to carry our southern boundary so far south as 
was needful to open a fair and practicable land route on 
our own soil to the Pacific, was an inexpiable and disgrace- 
ful lapse in those who signed a peace with Mexico. The 
only remedy for this dereliction, is in guarding for the fu- 
ture such communications as we do possess between the 
remote members of the Family Compact, from future chan- 
ces of hostile interference. 

The shortest land routes froni the older Slates to Califor- 
nia, Oregon, and the immense but faintly known mineral 



20 

regions of the great central basin, runs through Texas and 
touches the Gulf at Corpus Christi ; and all the practicable 
land routes to the Pacific abut eastwardly on the Mississippi, 
if not on the Gulf, and are all included in the imperial ring 
of seaboard to which Cuba is the closing diamond. If it 
comes to the Atlantic States to decide who shall hold this 
door to the Gulf, to the Pacific, to the mines of California, 
to Oregon and the whale fisheries, to the East India trade — 
trebled by the use of steam and the Isthmus, — to China, in 
whose markets our merchants will soon turn to profit a 
doubled and quadrupled capital by monopolising, through 
the shortened distance, the sale of our cottons and the pur- 
chase of her teas and silks ; will they refuse the fifty mil- 
lions a year which it will pour upon their exhilarated in- 
dustry, in their fields, factories and shipyards ? 

At this moment England commands two-thirds of the 
most valuable commerce of Asia ; but the United States 
gains rapidly upon her, and the entire change in the course 
of trade, by conducting it across the lower line of North 
America, instead of around Africa, will transfer to this re- 
public the sceptre of commerce — if not of manufacture — 
within ten years. Let our manufacturing and trading capi- 
talists estimate if they can the value of Cuba to their in- 
terests, as a centre of intelligence and exchange, and an 
advanced post of guard and defence. With Cuba for our 
watch-tower, the merchant and mail steamers which must 
naturally be employed in the enormously increasing traffic 
and emigration that circulates past and around her, would 
be the cheap and sufficient defence of our coasts. No na- 
tion would dream of wresting such a well-fortified possession 
from the vigorous grasp of the Union ; and too powerful to 
fear, and too just, it is to be hoped, to make aggressions, we 
could trust the protection of our flag to its known greatness. 
We could displace fearlessly our unpopular sailing navy 



21 

for a steam mail marine, useful and self-supporting in peace, 
yet capable of becoming, at the shortest warning, a formi- 
dable element of war. 

When Cuba passes into our constellation, we may dismiss 
two-thirds of our standing army, and turn three-fourths of 
our expensive fortifications into Houses of Instruction and 
Refuge ; for England, against whose threats and preten- 
sions they are chiefly maintained, will depart from this con- 
tinent when the cannon of Moro Castle thunders a republi- 
can welcome to the Stars of the Confederation. That salvo 
will destroy her last dream of supremacy on this side of the 
Atlantic, and at its voice she will abandon the shattered re- 
mains of her splendid chain of colonies to be gathered in 
their ripeness to the embrace of the Union. 

In 1845, when the independent press had roused the 
people, and urged our laggard government into some energy 
of action, her power and possessions enfolded us on every 
side like the coil of a serpent. Her Northern Provinces 
were linked by her steam-ships in an unbroken circle, with 
the Bermudas, Jamaica, the Belize, the Mosquito Shore, 
and across the Isthmus, which she controlled, to California, 
at which she aimed, and Oregon, which she partly held/ 
until the bands met again, and thus completed a line of cir- 
cumvallation around our territory. We broke forever her 
closer and stricter circle, and tore from her three precious 
points, when we annexed Texas, obtained California, and 
removed her Oregon claims far north of Columbia River. 
That decisive blow expelled her influence from our South- 
western border, while we improved our boundaries, and, 
Cuba excepted, had nothing left to interfere with us in the 
Gulf. The exclusive acquisition of this noble extent of ter- 
ritory on our Southern line, widened and weakened the 
vaunted cordon of British power around the Union ; but 
while the hope of Cuba remained, she had still a brilliant 



22 

and potent line of reserve. She still stretches across the 
continent on our Northern border, shares with us the em- 
pire of the lakes, domineers over our highway to the Paci- 
fic, and stands midway in the path of our coast communi- 
cation. Cuba is the precious clasp that joins or disjoins the 
Gulf and Pacific with the Atlantic lines, and ruinously 
opens or nobly closes the disconnected parts of her magnifi- 
cent American plan. If it falls into our chain, and closes 
the circle for us, and against her, the matchless band is 
broken, the fragments become so, and» whether Canada or 
the Islands, without cost or conquest, our confederation will 
absorb Bisitish America, and make the ocean her boundary, 
and its waves our army of border defence. 



HOW WILL CUBA INFLUENCE SLAVERY ? 

It is difficult to steer truly and justly between the Scylla 
and Charybdis of Northern and Southern prejudices, but 
we may safely aver this much : If England settles the des- 
tiny of Cuba, her lot is prefigured in the story of Jamaica, 
Hayti and Martinico. 

If she becomes really independent, the whites, who are 
but little inferior in numbers to the blacks, will maintain 
the ascendency by their superior intelligence, and slavery 
will probably be abolished by slow degrees. 

If the United States receive her, humanity will at least 
rejoice over the suppression of the slave trade, and a miti- 
gation of the horrors of the Spanish system of servitude, 
that " deepest hell of cruelty," as an indignant Creole of 
the island terms it. The Spanish conquerors, as merciless 
as they were avaricious, enslaved and scourged to utter 
extinction the gentle and confiding Ciboneyes whom they 
found on the soil, and now annually destroy, bv brutal 



23 

treatment, more slaves, including free-horn Mexicans en- 
trapped into servitude, than all the plantations in all our 
slave States put together. Their own staticians calmly 
account for the horrid mortality among the slaves by " the 
severity of their labors and insufficient food," but never 
hint at redress or remedy. The supply is kept up by an 
energetic importation from Africa, under the patronage of 
Queen Christina, who employs in the slave-trade much of 
the $25,000 a month which she draws from the revenues 
of Cuba. In the last twenty years, and since President 
Adams prevented the independence of Cuba, which would 
have shut out this undesirable accession, more than 160,000 
negroes have been brought in from Africa — 430 slave ships 
having entered Havana alone, without counting the other 
ports of the island. The fees of the Captain-General, at 
three doubloons a-head on these importations, are no incon- 
siderable item in his perquisites. England has a right, by 
solemn treaty with Spain in 1817, and re-sealed in 1820, 
to end this infamous traffic, yet it proceeds vigorously un- 
der her eyes. Is it that even by this means she is willing 
to increase the negro majority, while she awaits the hour 
in which Cuba can be added to the black empire she is fos- 
tering within striking distance of our Southern States, and 
which she can at any moment hurl, with the force and pre- 
cision of steam, upon our coasts ? 

Not only is this open protection lent to the African slave- 
trade, while white immigration is as openly discouraged, 
but large bodies of Indians are inveigled out from Yucatan 
and Mexico, and reduced to slavery. These men are sunk 
into the slave-gangs, where they are lashed, pilloried, and 
chained without pity, under the sanction of the Governor, 
who has conferred this authority on the masters by a formal 
decree. 

The admission of Cuba would at least set these freemen 



24 

at liberty, and stop the importation of 8000 slajvjgs every 
year from Africa, and this would be something saved to 
humanity and the character of American population. It is 
scarcely open to discussion, whether, in a comprehensive 
view, the colored race would gain or lose by Cuba coming 
within the range of our institutions ; but there can be no 
doubt whatever that the condition of the white half of her 
population would be infinitely softened, elevated and im- 
proved. It is not the fashion of the day to think of the 
good or evil resulting to the eighteen millions of white Ame- 
ricans, when a measure touching the supposed interests of 
our three millions of blacks is in agitation, and still less 
where races are so nearly balanced as in Cuba, and although 
the abrupt supremacy of the blacks would drive to ruin, or 
exile the half million of whites on the island, we are not 
permitted to reserve any anxieties for them. 

In Hayti the negroes have had unlimited power — as in 
Jamaica they have had unlimited equality — and what ad- 
vance have they made in happiness or civilization ? In 
the plenitude of their undisputed sway, they have murder- 
ed, insulted, and driven out the whites in St. Domingo, and 
no authority prevented ; they have governed themselves, 
and no man has said them nay ; yet in the mad, unchecked 
animality of their untaught, untamed masses, they have 
heaped upon each other more sufferings, more bloodshed, 
more tortures, and, even in that beauteous island of plenty, 
more downright want and misery among their population of 
780,000, than could be inflicted on our thrice that number 
of slaves, in the presence of a white community. This is 
proved by their own official statements of murders, riots, 
outrages, and military punishments. It does not prove that 
slavery is a good, or that the race is incapable of better 
things ; but it does prove by the conclusive evidence of ex- 
periment, that hasty emancipation has its evils for the un- 



25 

prepared Africans themselves, even though we refuse to 
count for anything what befalls the whites. 

To those who argue that emancipation is too slow in the 
iStates, I will not reply that it can move no faster, but I ap- 
peal to the chart of the Union to prove that much has been 
done — and well done — for the race, in freedom, in instruc- 
tion, and in colonization. In the British, and more lately 
in the French West Indies, unbounded means of improve- 
ment are enjoyed by the blacks, for there the presence and 
cultivation, and helpful example of the whites, who are in 
a minority of one-seventh, are made conspicuously subser- 
vient to the colored race, yet it is undeniable that their two 
millions are far worse fed, clad, and taught, than the two 
millions of the same lineage now living, slave and free, in 
the " Old Thirteen" States. 

This parent band of the Federal compact were all of 
them slave-holding when they joined hands at the altar of 
Independence, and some of them — P^hode Island and Mas- 
sachusetts in particular — were deeply engaged in the slave 
trade. Seven of them are now free soil, and two more, 
Delaware and Maryland, within a step of it ; and to this 
number of emancipating States have been added eight more, 
that never were in effect slave- holding. The aggregate of 
this free soil territory, which includes all the States north 
of the Ohio — the splendid gift of slave-holding Virginia — 
comprises a larger area than the whole original thirteen 
States, and has unquestionably the preponderance in the 
national councils. 

Our acquisitions of slave territory have failed to increase 
the comparative number and weight of the slave States, be- 
cause they only served to drain that class of labor towards 
the South, and, as it receded, it set free at the North more 
States and large divisions of the colored classes. Fifteen 
States are already free, and five more — Delaware, Mary- 
2 



26 

land, Virginia, Kentucky, and Mississippi — are in transition, 
ready to pass over to the side of free labor whenever the 
reference of such questions to the territories immediately 
concerned is established as a fixed principle, and they can 
abandon their posts, beside their slave-holding sisters, hon- 
orably and without danger to the equipoise of the Union. 
All the territory now held in common — sufficient in area to 
make forty of the largest States — must inevitably come in 
free, with or without the interference of Congress, as the 
climate and character of production will make slave labor 
unprofitable. To balance this wide "domain of free soil, 
there is but a comparatively small band of States along the 
extreme South, and to which the island of Cuba can make 
no frightful addition. 

Our immigration from Europe in a single year amounts 
to as much as the whole total of the slave inhabitants of 
Cuba, and after that last fragment of thraldom is brought 
within the pale of light and freedom, there can be no farther 
additions. The eighteen millions of whites will enlarge their 
ranks by emigration as well as births, and make stronger 
every year the disproportion of numbers, but the blacks and 
African servitude can draw no recruits from abroad. While 
State after State supplants and drives out unprofitable slave 
labor by the low wages of sound, mature, and intelligent 
white industry, hereditary servitude must contract its limits, 
until it is compressed into those regions of hot, unhealthy 
marsh in which negroes thrive, but which the constitution 
of the white man is unequal to the charge of redeeming 
from jungle and morass — and there slavery will end its mis- 
sion and depart forever. 

The non-slaveholding States would show a most ungener- 
ous sectional spirit if they object to the addition of Cuba to 
the political weight of the South, for her vote will not give 
the South an even, much less a controlling voice. Besides 



27 



the majority in the House of Representatives, and an equal 
vote in the Senate, the fifteen Free Soil States are confident 
of taking, before 1860, five States more from the opposite 
scale, and thus changing the present imperfect equilibrium, 
to an advantage on their side of twenty States to ten. Add 
to this the certainty that six new States — California, Oregon, 
Minesota, New Mexico, and Nebrasca — will complete their 
non-age during this period, and must beyond peradventure 
take their places in the national councils among the non- 
slaveholders, while but two slave States from Texas, and 
possibly Cuba, are all that can be hoped for by the dimin- 
ishing slave minority. Twenty-six free soil to thirteen 
slave States is the number and proportion that by every an- 
tecedent we may expect to sit in the thirty-fifth Congress. 
If, as is possible, the number of States exceeds that calcu- 
lation, still the ratio of one free to two slave States will not 
vary much, and with this assurance before us, it is nonsense, 
if it is not hypocricy, to reject Cuba under the plea of giv- 
ing " too much power to the South." 

For the individual States, for thd Nation, and for the ul- 
timate good of the races, it seems wisest and kindest to in- 
vite Cuba into the Compact of Union, and subject the crude 
and undeveloped negro family to the crucible of gradual 
emancipation. The interests of the human family demand 
that it should not be made the nucleus of a negro empire 
watching a European nod to foray our coast villages, while 
our domestic and foreign policy equally cautions us to win 
as promptly as we may the key of the Gulf, and hold with 
firm sovereignty the gates of the Pacific. 



THE 



The Mississippi is mighty in his imperial dignity, but 
more mighty in his lessons of unity and confederation. That 
matchless tide is the magic cestus which ensures the harmony 
of the sovereign sisters of the Union, and no peevish eruption 
of unsisterly jealousy can dispart the silver zone that so firm- 
ly and graciously binds their varied climes and products into 
one common interest. The ]\Iississippi is the most persua- 
sive mediator, the most energetic arbiter, and the most vigi- 
lant defender of the federal compact, linking into one chain of 
communication fourteen powerful states, and nearly half our 
entire population. Gathering to one outlet uncomputed 
thousands of miles of navigable waters ; holding in a condi- 
tion of facile interchange a vast series of diverse, yet mutu- 
ally dependent, agricultural, manufacturing, mining and 
commercial interests, there is no fraction of the wide terri- 
tory enfolded in the embrace of the hundred armed river, 
that could cut itself from the rest of the body, without des- 
troying the growth and vigor of its own fair proportions. 
Free-soil Iowa and Illinois may chide the heresies of slave- 
holding Kentucky and Louisiana, but not the less must wheat- 
growing and lead-producing Iowa and Illinois vend their 
wares, and buy their sugar and cotton, in the markets of their 
southern sisters, while their highway river holds open invi- 
tation to come and go in unrestrained profit and good will, 
and rebukes the intemperate folly of sectional aggression. 



30 

In ascending the Mississippi, you pass through all the cli- 
mates of the temperate zone, through a countless variety of 
production, through infinite changes of scenery, and through 
every phase of sectional prejudice. Leaving behind, on the 
fertile, but hot and unhealthy sugar plains, the darkest and 
most tenacious shades of Afi'ican servitude, the tints lighten 
step by step, and state by state, up to the lofty, health-inspi- 
ring shores of genial Kentucky and adventurous Missouri, 
where slavery visibly relaxes its grasp ; and onward, to the 
romantic and enchanting heights of Iowa and Wisconsin, 
where it never had a hold, until finally, at Minesota, the 
beautiful cradle of this marvellous stream, and two thousand 
miles above your starting point, where you saw its waves 
salute the sea in sullen grandeur, you hear the brief and 
proud declaration of territorial freedom : " Every state 
must, and every territory ought, decide for itself, and by it- 
self, whether it will admit or exclude slavery." 

In the month of June, 1849, I stood on the island that 
cleaves asunder the wild chaos of amber-hued waters, form- 
ing the cataract of St. Anthony, that second Niagara, whose 
overwhelming sublimity silences the mortal beholder ; and 
before that heaven-reared altar, with its veil of diamonds, 
and its rainbow crown, I almost vainly essayed to remem- 
ber there was another world outside of this stupendous whirl 
of elemental warfare — a world of petty efforts and pigmy 
human strifes. Yet there, with nature ringing her high eter- 
nal anthem in cadence with the plaint, a daughter of the 
Dacotas detailed the wrongs of the red race, and completed a 
lesson wBich I had half learned at the other extremity of that 
far-reaching river. 

" Here the torrent is colored with the tears of the red man, 
for the red man's tear is blood," she said, as she extended 
her graceful arm towards a rift in the falls where a clear 
column gleamed coral bright through the parted drapery of 



31 

pearl-white spray. " Far away, where our snow-hills are 
forgotten under a burning sky, these v/aters wear another 
stain — the stain of the bhick man's tears of dust and sweat." 

A sad truth is shrouded in the Indian girl's wild poetry. 
Minesota, Iowa and Wisconsin, grieve over the woes of the 
African slave a thousand miles off, while, with every art of 
diplomacy and war, they chase the poor Indian beyond their 
border, and take counsel, openly, how to despoil him of his 
hunting grounds, and exile him forever from the graves of 
his ancestors, and the dear haunts of his boyish sport and 
manly daring. 

Louisiana and Mississippi thrill with indignation at the 
sufferings of the Indian, as he recedes before the eager march 
of civilization, or dies in her embrace ; but they look calmly 
on the bondage of the African. Each compassionates large- 
ly the sin that is not of its own neighborhood, and reconciles 
itself to the pressure of the evil at home, until conscience and 
convenience can meet to adjust a settlement, and agree up- 
on the^remedy. 

The older states hunted down the red men, and enslaved 
the black ones, until the land was all in white hands, and free 
servants became more profitable than purchased ones, and 
then conscience immediately opened her slumbering eyes 
and raised her head from her gold embroidered pillow to 
pray for the repose of the slaughtered Indians, and emanci- 
pate her useless Africans. 

Those states which have thoroughly exterminated and dis- 
possessed the Indians, and who have no large Native Ameri- 
can land reserves to bar the speed of the axe and the plough 
within their limits, are tranquil and tender-hearted on Indian 
matters, just as those who have escaped from the cares and 
incumbrances of a redundant negro population, are at lei- 
sure to censure those still yoked to the burthen. 

In those border states, where they are even now receiving 



32 

their baptism of blood and fire in Indian forays, and where 
every white person counts for the full worth and value of a 
human being in the muster-roll of civilization, they do not 
dwell so heavily on a red man shot, or a black one over- 
tasked, but they turn pale with horror when they read of the 
stern serfdom of chain and lash in which sailors are crushed 
in our commercial cities, or the hard servitude of poverty 
which binds thousands of young maidens to the harsh hours 
and tasks of our eastern factories. States like Kentucky, 
that have no troublesom.e Indians in their household — that 
have drained off their superfluous Africans, and are about 
exchanging slave labor for more economical hired service, 
and who are making encouraging advances in mines and 
manufactures, contemplate with serene indulgence all the 
prosperous and legalized forms of servitude that flourish in 
their .bounds ; but their indulgent moderation aims, never- 
theless, at future amendments. They lead the van from 
their position in the career of amelioration ; but it is only 
by this favored position they are enabled to be such clear 
exemplars, and so far ahead in the school of fraternity. In 
time, the dwellers in more ungenial latitudes will come up 
to the point these leaders now occupy, for freedom and light 
are urging all their children on the upward course. In the 
glance backward over the path they have travelled, the fore- 
most pretenders to supreme humanity must confess the les- 
son taught by the desert-born, but educated daughter of the 
Dacota chief at St. Anthony's Falls. 

Oppressors and oppressed dwell everywhere ; but it is on- 
ly the unfuimiliar form that moves general and active abhor- 
rence. This impulse against African servitude which agi- 
tates the northern states — to whom it is unknown — and ex- 
asperates in its defence the south, who declares it a strin- 
gent necessity of self-preservation to the whites, is — at least 
with the masses — but a geographical morality. A human- 



33 

ity of latitude and longitude, modified by climate, relaxing 
under the moist heats of the south, and intensifying in the 
cold winters of New-England. 

In three short weeks I had touched the extremes of south- 
ern and northern oppression. On the same river, under the 
same religion, government and language, I had seen the Af- 
rican in hereditary bondage, hopeless, of freedom for himself 
or children, and daily driven to his task by bodily fear, yet 
careless and content in his glossy well-fed health, and ma- 
king the sunny plains resound with his songs, until the most 
resolute abolitionists doubted whether this child of an unde- 
veloped race, still in the imbecility of its unprepared animal 
dependence, did not require the social polity that gives him 
a master to tend his wants and compel him to learn the use 
of his hands and mind. 

On the upper waters of the river I saw the home of Black 
Hawk and his braves in the occupation of the whites, and 
heard the broken-hearted remnant of his tribe relate in a 
cold despair, too deep for tears and complaints, that the bar- 
ren desert assigned them by a mocking treaty vi^as whiten- 
ing with the bones of half their women and children. They 
did not lament — but they did not smile — when they told that 
beside every lodge was a grave. I saw the Dacotas, who 
have of their kindred many educated persons of mixed blood 
intermarried with their plunderers, yielding up in stern and 
silent gloom their chosen hunting grounds, and their sacred 
altar stones, hallowed by immemorial tradition of martial 
rites and Dacota glory ; and none could look upon this de- 
caying race, and upon the stony, joyless composure with 
which they face the path of exile and death, and say as we 
do of the laughing, dancing slaves, "This is a. happy race." 
The dweller on the Upper Mississippi puts his foot on the neck 
of the expiring Indian, as he exclaims, " Behold the cruelty of 
the slave-holder." The dweller on the Lower Mississippi 
o* 



34 

raises the lash over the African, and retorts, '• Behold the 
injustice of the Indian-oppressor." Missouri and Kentucky, 
who have tasted both evils and yielded to both temptations, 
turn to the north and to the south, and say, " Judge ye 
gently one of the other, for ye know not the weight of your 
brother's cross." 



THE LAND OF THE SUGAR-CANE. 

Louisiana is the sugar plantation of the Union, and no soil 
in its linciits yields a more generous return to the cultivator, 
but in entering the state from the gulf it gives no such prom- 
ise of wealth and fertility. We left the bright and lovely 
banks of Corpus Christi, vv'here the flov/ers never cease to 
bloom, and the fresh breeze never forgets to play in the fairy 
groves that dot, like emeralds of deeper tint, the green sa- 
vannas, and it was a chilling contrast to meet at the mouth 
of the river the dreary waste of turbid waters cutting their 
sullen way through the still more dreary expanse of black 
mud. All the southern border of Louisiana is a labyrinth 
of wide shallow lakes, interlaced by sluggish bayous, and 
surrounded by interminable marshes, seamed at intervals 
with veins of higher land along the water-courses. Forts 
Jackson and St. Philip stand on the dividing line, between 
the domain of man and reptiles, for it is just at the head of 
the vast peninsula of mud, created by the river sediment, and 
not yet solid enough to bear trees in v/hich the wide current 
divides itself and seeks the sea by several channels. Above, 
cultivation begins to be possible ; below, only the alligators 
can find a home. An isolated pilot village — an anchorage 
of handsome white houses — has started up at the Balize. and 
greets the eye like a cluster of lilies in a dark marsh ; but 
that is a commercial, not an agricultural growth. 



35 

After passing the forts, the " coast" soon becomes radiant 
with verdure and beauty. The voices of busy men come 
from the field, the plantation houses glance brightly out of 
their bowers of foliage, and every sight and sound is redolent 
of luxuriant fertility. This " coast" is nevertheless a pro- 
verb of fear to the slave. Its sugar plantations accept for 
their severe toil the stupid, vicious and refractory slave 
drainage of all the States, and here exists the harshest disci- 
pline and the least kindly bonds between slave and master. 
Yet the negro population thrives more gaily under even these 
disadvantages than in the mildest of the free States. They 
have no heed for the future, and are not loaded with the 
cares of self-goverement. Let it be understood that I touch 
not the justice or injustice of slavery. I deal simply with 
the facts within my sphere of observation, and leave what 
is above my handling to divines and philosophers. The 
slave population of Louisiana seems to be in that primary 
stage of developement in which the animal nature predomi- 
nates ; and if the animal wants are satisfied, and the feebler 
mental capacities not overtaxed, they are happy. This 
whole region is so noxious to white constitutions that it would 
lie undrained and useless ; and we should have to resign 
altogether the production of sugar and rice, until we had 
reared in starving poverty a Paria caste of whites miserable 
enough to undertake it, if we had not a race of African la- 
borers to whom it is more genial. The redemption of five 
millions of acres, now subject to overflow, but capable of rich 
returns in rice and sugar, will add immensely to the health 
and beauty of Louisiana, as well as to the productive wealth 
of the Union ; but under existing circumstances it could 
only be done by whites at an outlay of life and suffering far 
beyond all the blacks endure. The acquisition, in 1803, of 
the Mississippi Valley and its noble highway, doubled the 
territory of the States, and greatly increased the power and 



56 

standing of the nation, by giving it the control of the cotton 
supply in the markets of Europe. This sudden and gigan- 
tic step in annexation struck terror into the hearts of all the 
timid patriots in the Union. They predicted the disruption 
of such an un wieldly, overgrown republic, and declared it 
to be impossible to govern and defend such an extent of thin- 
ly populated territory. Above all, the anti-slavery men, 
who were not then a sectional party, but scattered lightly 
all over the country, north and south, inquired anxiously 
how the accession of a new twentieth to the number of slaves 
was to affect the course of emancipation. Time has an- 
swered all these questions. 

In 1800, the immense valley watered by the King of Riv- 
ers and his tributaries, had less than four hundred thousand 
civilized inhabitants — about one- fourteenth part of the pop- 
ulation-r— now it has seven millions, and counts one-thiixi of 
the votes of the Union. Then the colored population made 
one-fifth of the whole, now it is reduced to a seventh, and 
the white preponderance is increased every year by em- 
igration from Europe. 

Of the states formed out of this territory, five are free-soil 
and six are slave-holding ; but of the latter, two are prepa- 
ring to emancipate before I860; and another — Minesota — 
will come in a free-soil state, so that this region, at the pre- 
sent rate of progress, will number, in a very short time, 
eight free states to four that are slave-holding, and this ear- 
ly result I impute chiefly to the extension of slave limits. 
The introduction of a new and enormously profitable culti- 
vation, which, from the peculiar nature of the soil and cli- 
mate, was unwholesome for the whites, created a rapid de- 
mand for negroes on the sugar-cane fields of Louisiana, and 
raised the price of slaves throughout the Union. Tobacco 
was still a highly encouraging crop, and cotton was about 
to become one of our most precious staples, so that the older 



37 

southern states had a home demand that aided to enhance 
the rising value of slaves, and, in a parallel degree, the wa- 
ges of free labor. The northern states felt the advance in 
the wages of their hired servants, and the -corresponding 
high standard of dress, food and comforts for their slaves, 
which public opinion and the example of white laborers en- 
forced on the masters. The rearing and maintenance of 
slaves became, on the average, more than their services 
were worth, and the most robust workers were gradually- 
sent towards the south, which also became the punishment 
of the heavy-headed and unmanageable. Their place was 
supplied by emigrants from Europe, who were attracted by 
the large wages and cheap lands of the young republic even 
before they learned to appreciate its institutions. The char- 
acter of the colored population in the northern states, thus 
purified of its roughest dross, soon attained the level of self- 
government. Emigration more than filled the blank left by 
the retiring blacks, and labor kept its balance with capital. 
If there had been no addition to our cotton lands, and if su- 
gar had not come to demand new laborers at any price, wa- 
ges would have crept up more slowly, and there would have 
been less inducement for foreigners to come to this country. 
The impetus from the cane-brakes of Louisiana vibrated to 
the shores of Ireland. The long file of toilers that marched 
into the ferule but fever- reeking plains of the Mississippi was 
not broken, until, at New- York, the last departing rank saw 
itself crowded away, and its place taken by a sturdier and 
more intelligent European band. The servitude of wages 
had supplanted the servitude of purchase. It is not a pal- 
atable truth, but it is a truth, nevertheless. No state has 
emancipated until the colored population was inferior in 
numbers to the laboring class of whites, and at that point 
slavery becomes a burthen, and it is gently put to death. 
Thus the apparent gain to slavery of a vast territory really 



38 

set free as many states at the north, and even the addition 
of resident slaves it made at one extremity of the Union was 
more than balanced by the number emancipated at the oth- 
er. In the great valley itself, the call of slaves towards the 
south opened a speedier day of entire freedom, by diluting 
and thinning that class of servants, and inviting in, with the 
temptation of ready work and wages, a higher order of white 
service. Slaves never were profitable in New-England, be- 
cause the quality and quantity of clothing, bedding and hous- 
ing, required in their long, cold winters, was an over-balan- 
cing item. There is so much care, thrift, and intelligence 
demanded in the usual routine of labor in that hard-featured 
land, that a heedless and improvident race was rather a bur- 
den than a profit — taken, as slaves must be, from the cradle 
to the grave — and Nev/-England generally sold to milder 
latitudes the Africans her ships brought to America. She 
was an importer, not an employer of negroes ; and when 
the slave trade was abolished she forthwith washed her hands 
of the whole business, and set down conscience. clean to lec- 
ture her neighbors on their slow-paced morality. 

THE CRESCENT CITY. 

In ascending the Mississippi, it is well to pause and ob- 
serve, in its very citadel, the workings of slavery. It is the 
fashion to say, that the mere presence of slavery stagnates 
the flow of industry, and impedes ruinously the prosperous 
advance of any country ; and there is a certain amount of 
truth in this — as there is in all popular errors ; for they 
must have a little breath of vitality to live — but it is a par- 
tial and distorted truth. 

It is true, that educated and self-governing industrial 
classes are the ablest supporters of the state, but all pro- 
ducers have their value. 



39 

Of all the cities in the Union, New-Orleans is the only- 
one that doubled its population in two successive census de- 
cades, ending in 1840, though Cincinnati, St. Louis, and 
Louisville, did nearly the same thing. In each case this 
miraculous prosperity has the same magnificent source — a 
free water transit by river, lake and canal, of well nigh twen- 
ty thousand miles. The character and resources of the coun- 
try in tribute to the respective cities will, if studied with oth- 
er local causes, explain perfectly the variations in their pre- 
sent and future career, independent of the question, wheth- 
er the bone and sinew expended there were strained under 
the urgings of hunger or of the lash. With a free commerce, 
at home and abroad, and the natural mart of the fifteen de- 
grees of climate and latitude, for which the Mississippi is the 
conductor of trade, New-Orleans must be rich and powerful. 
Her straight, well-paved, nobly built streets, with their col- 
onnades of beautiful trees, her stately edifices, her splendid 
charities, her river embankments of almost fabulous cost, 
her railroads, her canals, her suburb towns, that are them- 
selves fair and prosperous cities, were all redeemed from a 
pestilential morass ; and — like the capitol of Rome and the 
temples of Greece — it is the labor of slave hands. The slave 
markets of those illustrious republics stood in the midst of 
their forums and palaces, while one taught and the other con- 
quered the world ; but it is not a necessary sequence that the 
lords of ancient civilization were sinless in forgetting the 
rights of toil, any more than the modern planter or manu- 
facturer who imitates their oversight. The noblest men and 
the proudest nations of all ages have been more or less 
thralled in defective systems, and only the Supremely Wise, 
who sees all the antecedents and all the environments of the 
case, can decide how far they are the masters, and how far 
the victims of their lot. The majestic steamers that border 
the Crescent City like a forest, seem full of life and power, 



40 

but they can only move on the element on which they find 
themselves, and blindly obey the small and simple wheel 
that appears so insignificant in the general mass. Man's 
interest is the governing wheel, and circumstances, born be- 
fore he saw the light, compose the elements of his action.^ 
Almost divine must be the nature that can altogether shape 
these influences to his aspirations. 

The progress of the amelioration of the African family is 
witnessed at New-Orleans with more distinctness than any- 
where else. Leaving aside those of mixed blood, the blacks 
who have been four or five descents in contact with civil- 
ization, and who have been taught, though by the rude ap- 
prenticeship of slavery, to exert their energies, have unfolded 
into a much higher people than the original Africans. The 
developement of moral and intellectual powers has striking- 
ly improved the form and expression of their features ; and 
from a hideous tribe, capable only of animal incentives, 
gratifications and attachments, they have been brought up 
to the standard of moral capability. From this vantage 
ground, the race among us will go rapidly forward, under 
the impetus of white example, whether in freedom or servi- 
tude. With the intrinsic elevation of the colored popula- 
tion, and with the introduction of white servants, who mark 
out the pattern, custom is commanding for them a system 
of kinder treatment and more generous indulgences from 
their masters. It is a generally conceded fact, that the la- 
boring classes of Europe are not so well fed and clothed, nor 
so lightly tasked, as the southern slaves ; nor is there in 
most countries of the old world more attention paid to pea- 
sent instruction than in Louisiana and Mississippi, who have 
the worst and most uncouth colored population in the Uni- 
on ; and, what is an interesting collateral fact, it is also the 
most indifferent to freedom. I have known many instances 
of slave mothers — of the better order too — such as hair-dress- 



41 

ers, lady's maids, marchandes (those who go about to^sell 
goods,) and seamstresses, refuse to make very moderate sac- 
rifices to purchase their own and their children's freedom* 
Whoever has lived much in southern cities is aware that 
large numbers of the brightest slaves hire their time of their 
masters, at a fixed price, and worl< out at their trades to great 
advantage for themselves. Almost any of these could buy 
their freedom by practising, for a few years, the industry 
and economy which a free-born man of the north must prac- 
tise all his life, to win a decent independence ; yet it seldom 
happens that one of them will make the necessary self-de- 
nial. There are noble exceptions, but they are rare. The 
race is not yet cultivated up to the point at which intellec- 
tual aspirations overcome animal propensities ; and it is a 
question with some, whether that point can possibly be at- 
tained in slavery. The whites have attained it in other coun- 
tries, under equal or greater disadvantages, and the yoke of 
serfdom fell from their necks. Let us hope everything 
therefore for the blacks. 

The northern states, when lightened of the guardianship 
of a numerous class, aliens to them by prejudice and strik- 
ing physical differences, provided liberally for the education 
of the colored children still remaining among them, and in 
those branches of study which require memory and imitation, 
rather than research and laborious comparison, they have 
succeeded precisely as well as the whites. In the full and 
continued developement of the race still higher results will 
follow. The same results, though more imperfect and par- 
tial in their scope, are visible at New-Orleans, and more 
particularly in the mixed bloods. That class are polite and 
graceful imitators of the most polished examples they see ; 
they all sing and dance with a certain proficiency, and ob- 
serve and learn whatever falls within the limits of the senses, 
but they eschew vigorous mental effort. They are develop. 



42 

ing under rough tuition, but it so far suits their necessities 
that the improvement is perceptible. The white foreigners, 
employed in offices one shade above them, are their aptest 
and most efficient teachers ; and this description of persons 
are flowing rapidly into all the cities of the South. When 
I last landed at New-Orleans, a white hackman conveyed 
us to the St. Charles, the white porter of that princely estab- 
lishment received the baggage, and white chambermaids at- 
tended me in my apartment. These are the avant couriers 
of emancipation. Slavery has spread over so large a sur- 
face that its weakened ranks cannot shut out competition, 
and white competition is the grave of slave labor. When- 
ever and wherever the white man begins to contend for em- 
ployment with the African, he does not fail to draw rein- 
forcements from the crowded armies of his kindred, who 
await his call ; but the negro cannot recruit on this conti- 
nent. He can only thin the States that are drawing close 
their lines for emancipation, and hasten for them the day 
that must eventually dawn for every State that opens its 
gates to emigration. 



THE TRANSITION STATES. 

After passing the land of sugar and rice, and almost the 
land of cotton, we come upon the debateable ground which 
separates the sunny slave-cultivated plains of the South 
from the wheat fields and free labor of the Upper Missis- 
sippi. Kentucky and Missouri have not yet escaped from 
the pressure of a surplus colored population, and therefore 
have not attained the pure and unrelenting anti-slavery feel- 
ing of the exempted States ; but the tide of emigration from 
Europe and the North is rolling on, and negro servitude 
must retire before it. A varied and complicated system of 



43 

production in mines, factories, and a subdivided agriculture, 
presents itself in these States, and demands a higher and more 
intelligent class of laborers. The Old World is pouring in 
its thousands and tens of thousands of artisans and farmers to 
fill this demand, on such economical terms as will displace 
slavery. From Missouri eastward, a zone of five States is 
trembling in the balance of transition. A reluctance — nat- 
ural to their position and honorable to their good faith — to 
abandon their old allies, the slave-holders, not to mention the 
embarrassment of disposing of a large colored population, 
retards decisive action, but the struggle is closing upon them, 
and can only end in one way. Slavery has been driven 
from the whole area of the fifteen free States as an unprofita- 
ble burden ; for it is a solemn truth, that no State cast it off 
while it was thought profitable — and its death-knell would 
now be ringing in all this broad sweep of transition States, 
from Delaware and Maryland, through Virginia, Kentucky 
and Missouri, on and on, to the Pacific, if, besides the check 
of sectional agitation, there did not rise on either side a wall 
of obstruction against the drainage of their superfluous 
blacks. On the South, the slave States resolutely shut their 
doors, in self-defence, against the admission of free colored 
persons. They have already more than they know what to 
do with, and but for higher considerations of humanity, their 
interests would counsel a general expulsion of the whole 
class from the slave borders. On the North, there is almost 
as much discouragement. Some States absolutely refuse 
them an asylum, and in the remainder there is but cold wel- 
come and scant employment for uninstructed blacks among 
the swarming thousands of white emigrants. It is not the 
least curious feature of our geographical morality, that it 
has never occurred to but one or two States in the Union to 
apply the abstract benevolence which they are so enthusias- 
tic in teaching to others, to the short-comings of their own 



44 

position. Some States will not grant a shelter at all to the 
colored race, and few, indeed, have allowed them even a lim- 
ited franchise ; but most of them are willing to make up for 
this cold protection at home, by excessively warm lectures 
to the South in their behalf. This is well ; for, in time, their 
impressive rhetoric on equity and equality may produce its 
fruits, and they may enter in very truth into all the bless- 
ings, social and political, of amalgamation. Heaven may 
deign, at last, to smile upon their sublime and unwearied ef- 
forts to this deserved fruition, but thus far such are not the 
signs of promise. A deep antipathy is rising and strength- 
ening against these unfortunate aliens throughout the land. 
Any careful observer may read, in the firmament, clouds of 
retaliation and expulsion that will fall upon the race whose 
presence caused our domestic broils, whenever the storm 
breaks and the sky clears. The emancipation of this belt 
of transition States, which must ensue from the natural and 
uncontrollable laws of population, immediately that section- 
al opposition relaxes, will be the signal for vast and energetic 
measures for the transportation of the Africans to the origi- 
nal seat of their race. 

The presence of a people with whom they do not think it 
well or wise to intermarry, is a light thing in Maine, New 
Hampshire or Vermont, where the colored persons — besides 
being of a caste infinitely superior to those of the South, by 
education and admixture of blood — are only as one in three 
hundred to the whites, or even in Massachusetts, where they 
count about one in a hundred ; but it is more serious when, 
as in Delaware, Maryland and Virginia, they make one third 
of the whole population. The third, it must not be forgot- 
ten, which, from its moral and intellectual unpreparedness, 
is certain to be burthensome to the State. In Missouri and 
Kentucky, immigration has probably by this time — the eve 
of 1850 — reduced the black population nearer a fourth of 



45 

their entire population ; but still the grave question is before 
them, " What is to be done with this mass of 150,000 souls 
of African descent ?" 

This is a question which European philosophy finds so 
simple at three thousand miles distance. It replies, " Open 
to them your ballot-boxes and your family relations." But 
this side the Atlantic we have an invincible prejudice against 
this benevolent proposal of mixing to the Quadroon tint half 
of the States of the Confederation, or giving to the African 
suffrages the balance of power. Ungenerous, and unrea- 
sonable too, as it seems to people three thousand miles off, 
not one of the " Transition States" would consent to this ar- 
rangement, and however liberal the theories and wishes of 
the Northern negrophilos may be, none have spoken of en- 
forcing their practical adoption at the point of the bayonet. 

Missouri and Kentucky will not pause, however, in their 
career of emancipation. In the last ten years they have 
more than trebled their white laborers of the class in imme- 
diate competition with the colored producers. This has 
crowded the latter out of many branches of industry, and 
diminished the profits of slave-owning in a corresponding 
degree. To speak with more precision, white labor has 
underbid black, though both are well repaid in those favored 
States, and hire is becoming more safe and satisfactory to 
the employer than the risk and outlay of purchase. The 
same causes have swept steadily southward from the begin- 
ning of our nationality, and the march has never been 
swerved by any moral consideration from its chart of lati- 
tude. Slavery has receded before the climate and white 
laborers of the fifteen most ungenial States, and is only 
allowed a temporary halt in five more, who are flanked in 
prospective by two new ones in the Far West. Californa 
and Deseret continue the line from the Atlantic to the Pa- 
cific, across the fairest portion of the continent. On and 



46 

above this transition line are mines adequate to the supply 
of the world in valuable metals, water power to manufac- 
ture for the world, land to subsist in luxury a hundred mil- 
lions, and means of intercommunication which the world 
may well envy. With this guarantee of twenty-four free 
soil States by 1860 — for Minesota and Oregon will come 
into the ranks with the transition States — leaving of the 
present muster-roll but ten slave-holding States, who could 
be so weak as to fear the addition of one, two, or three slave 
States ? Who does not see that the harmony and balance 
of the Union could not be endangered if all the continent 
south ©f the transition line down to the Isthmus were added 
to the slave-holding power ? It would still be in the mi- 
nority in territory, in population, and in States. If the 
slave force were diluted by spreading it over a larger sur- 
face, it would only invite more early and more urgently the 
presence and competition of free labor, and quicken the day 
of its final extinction. The map of the United States and 
the tables of emigration refute, in brief and irresistible logic, 
the fear, if there is really any one who entertains it, of the 
extension or preponderance of the slave influence. 



THE NECESSARY ULTIMATE OF SLAVERY. 

It is conceded that slavery cannot retrograde to the realms 
it has left behind, nor can it ever obtain any effective foot- 
hold westward or northward of its present limits, however it 
might be tolerated by law. The whole nature of the coun- 
try and its productions, and the increasing momentum of 
the emigrant power, join to forbid the possibility. We have 
in this vast domain space for forty of the largest states, and 
we have emigrants landing on our shores at a rate to settle 
half a dozen of them in a year. If those laboring foreigners 



47 

do not instantly urge before them into the unsettled territo- 
ries the population requisite to entitle those territories to a 
name and place among the sovereignties of the Confederation, 
they remain in the older states to crowd forward our native- 
born masses to higher aims in newer fields, and to hurry a- 
way the lingering obstacle of slave preponderance in the 
transition states. 

Already in the three-quarters just closed, of this year of 
1849, it is computed that 300,000 strangers have come to 
our soil for fortune or refuge ; and if this number were even- 
ly divided among five territories demanding admittance to the 
national councils, they could not be refused — if the constitu- 
tion is valid. It is not an act of condescension and free-grace 
in Congress to accept a state when it presents itself under the 
conditions prescribed by the constitution — it is an imperative 
duty. It is for the state, in the attributes of her sovereign 
power, of which she cannot divest herself, and which cannot 
be bartered away in her territorial minority, to arrange her 
own provisoes, and govern, like all her peers, her own do- 
mestic institutions, in her own independent manner. Yet 
there is, every year, less and less possibility of creating slave 
states, for the simple and definite lack of slave material. 

The map of this union of states oflTers a cooling balm to 
whoever has a feverish dread of " extending slavery." It 
proves this "extension" a distinct impossibility, unless we 
borrow a new population from Africa to people the new states. 
When our Revolutionary sires swore to the Federal compact 
on the altar they had reared to Liberty, they and the states 
they represented were all slave-holding. There was not a 
spot of free-soil in Christian possession on this continent when 
they proclaimed the Charter of Independence and Confede- 
ration. Then all the great powers of Christendom were slave- 
traders, and endless were the disputes and diplomacy between 
Most Catholic Spain, and Christian France, and England, 



48 

" the example of nations," for a monopoly of its honors and 
profits. They claimed it between them and wrangled for 
the largest share, as they had divided and monopolized this 
continent. American colonies received the slave-trafficking 
vices with the language and laws of their mother- country ; 
yet the Old Thirteen, of their own free-will and judgment, 
estopped the importation of slaves, though their wide extent 
of sparsely-settled territory cried aloud for more laborers. 
Of the brave Old Thirteen, seven of the states (for Delaware 
is on the fence) have withdrawn from slavery, and far more 
than half- of the population and of the acquired territory is 
with them ; and half the area and people of the remaining 
states are preparing to follow this illustrious example. 

How can a statesman so trifle with his reputation for sa- 
gacity as to speak of apprehensions of the "extension of 
slavery," when he knows the very children of this land of 
light can proye their fallacy by a reference to a chart of the 
republic — that true and noble guide in which they are 
rarely uninstructed. The first sprightly boy of twelve he 
meets from our public schools, will run his finger up Dela- 
ware Bay, along the south line of Pennsylvania, then down 
the Ohio and up the Mississippi, until he touches the north 
line of Missouri, and again along that line and down the 
western limits of that state and Arkansas, to the Red River, 
and this child will tell him that all these fifteen largest 
states of the Union north and west of this line, and all the 
immense domain beyond them, and all their eleven or twelve 
millions of inhabitants, are non-slaveholding ; and every 
one of them, from old Massachusetts to young Iowa, by 
their unbiassed act, for no pre-engagements — if they exist- 
ed — could bind the will of an independent state. If the 
grave statesman doubts, this child will also assure him that 
every one of the forty states yet to arise in this outside do- 
main must inherit the same rights of sovereignty, yet from 



49 

the circumstances of latitude and production, every one of 
them will step into Congress a non-slaveholder, as one after 
the other they receive baptism and confirmation in the con- 
gregation of republics. 

Again, this youthful finger, anxious to re-assure the old 
man who is afraid to trust the Republic and her children, 
will trace the south line of Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, 
Kentucky, and Missouri — those states now visibly moving 
from slave to free cultivation, and who have been, and 
are, the bulwarks and nursing mothers of the younger 
states — and then this stripling of twelve, full of the confi- 
dence and enthusiasm of a nursling of the Union, will say, 
" When, in 1860, I cast my first vote, all these states will 
have passed through their transition trials, and this whole 
area, three times as large as all New-England, and even 
now having a greater population, will be free-soil and belt- 
ed with other free-soil states not yet marked out or named 
in the maps of civilization, besides Nebrasca and Minesota." 
The eloquent politician takes counsel with his fears, and 
perchance with his ambition, how to retain an excuse for 
his resounding lamentations on the " immoral and destruc- 
tive extension of slave limits;" but he cannot impress them 
on the boy of the common schools, for there he has been 
taught to understand the map, the history, and the constitu- 
tion of his mother-land, and nothing can shake his loving 
faith in her wisdom and equity. For all reply to the vehe- 
ment declarations of the graybeard, that she is slow, false, 
corrupt, imperfect, and unsatisfactory — the hopeful and 
trusting boy will turn to the second class of transition states, 
and dashing along the south margin of North Carolina, 
Tennessee, and Arkansas, and on until he is lost in the un- 
explored Centralia of the west, he will add, "In 1860 there 
will be in those states more free white emigrants than slavet^ ; 
and in ten years, or less, throughout the whole Union, if 



50 



\ foreign emigration remains but at its present rate, the entire 
black population, free and slave, will be outnumbered byj 
the Europeans who come here for work, and then all this 
region will be engaged in dismissing their slaves. Theses 
facts are taught in our schools; are they deceitful, sir?"' 
The statesman still hesitates to believe in the advancement! 
and integrity of the Confederation, and he asks : " Where, 
then, do you children of to-day, who are to be men and 
voters in 1860, expect to find the limits and proportions of, 
the positively slave-holding states, when a little later you 
shall come to the active guardianship of the Republic ? " 1 

" It will be confined to Souih Carolina and Georgia of fhe I 
original thirteen, and the five states on the Gulf of Mexi- 
co — to less than an eighth of the territory, and less than a 
sixth of the population of the United States." 

Well might the rebuked declaimer against the repose 
and existing policy of the Union pause to inquire why he 
would arrest the mighty wheel of progress, and endanger 
the noble machinery of the Confederation, to brush away a 
speck of dust that clings to its band of wisdom-tempered 
steel. 



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